People Business Partner

Harness•San Francisco, CA

2d•Hybrid

About The Position

Harness is the AI Software Delivery Platform company, led by technologist and entrepreneur Jyoti Bansal (founder of AppDynamics, acquired by Cisco for $3.7B). Harness has raised approximately $570M in funding and is valued at $5.5B, backed by leading investors including Goldman Sachs, Menlo Ventures, IVP, Unusual Ventures, Citi Ventures, and more. As AI accelerates code creation, the real bottleneck has shifted to everything after the code – testing, deployments, application security, reliability, compliance, and cost optimization. Harness brings AI and automation to this “outer loop,” helping teams ship software faster while maintaining security and governance throughout the entire software delivery lifecycle. Powered by Harness AI and the Software Delivery Knowledge Graph, the Harness Platform applies deep context and intelligent automation across the software delivery lifecycle with governance and policy-driven controls embedded throughout the platform. Over the past year, Harness powered over 185M deployments, 82M builds, 18T flag evaluations, 8M security scans, 9.1B optimized tests, 3T protected API calls, and helped manage $2.8B in cloud spend — enabling customers like United Airlines, Morningstar, and Choice Hotels to accelerate releases by up to 75%, reduce cloud costs by up to 60%, and achieve 10x DevOps efficiency. With a global team across 26 offices and 27 countries, Harness is shaping the future of AI software delivery — and we’re looking for exceptional talent to help us move even faster.

Requirements

3+ years of progressive HR or People Business Partner experience
Proven ability to influence front-line and mid-level managers and manage ambiguity
Excellent communication, judgment, and problem-solving skills
Has experimented with building AI-assisted workflows

Nice To Haves

Experience supporting teams within a global organization preferred
Experience in tech, SaaS, or high-growth environments preferred

Responsibilities

Provide coaching to managers on critical people-related dimensions, including performance management, team dynamics, career development, and employee retention and engagement.
Provide data-driven insights on workforce trends, retention signals, and talent risks within your client group.
Support organizational changes including team growth, restructuring, and manager transitions.
Act as the primary point of contact for employee relations matters across your assigned client groups, including ER cases, performance concerns, PIPs, and exits.
Conduct exit interviews and synthesize themes for leaders and the broader People team.
Manage investigations, disciplinary actions, and grievances with discretion and sound judgment.
Ensure compliance with federal and state employment laws; partner with Legal on complex cases and risk mitigation.
Execute cyclical People programs including mid-year reviews, year-end performance cycles, quarterly talent sales reviews, and compensation planning cycles.
Own communications and project management for these programs.
Partner with Total Rewards, L&D, and People Operations to ensure global programs are implemented with consistency.
Support talent planning and succession conversations; surface risks and themes upward to the Senior PBPs.
Build and maintain AI-powered agents and automated workflows for repeatable HR tasks to allow for higher-value work.
Create self-serve employee resources, templates, and toolkits to reduce high-volume inquiry load.
Partner closely with People Operations, Total Rewards, Workplace, and Learning & Development teams.
Contribute to team-wide People initiatives as a peer alongside other US-based PBPs — sharing methodology, tools, and project work.
Support consistent application of global People programs with thoughtful, locally relevant execution.